• March 29, 2001

Jupiter Media Metrix says that nearly half of online users with a household income of more than $100,000 plan to use an accountant to prepare their taxes this year, as opposed to the do-it-yourself online tax prep method. But online users with a household income of more than $100,000 are the fastest growing demographic group to tax-related websites since the peak month of last year's tax season (February 2000).

Traffic to tax sites hailing from this income bracket grew 45%, from 2.2 million unique visitors in February 2000 to 3.2 million in February 2001. The top tax-related site in February 2001 according to composition of users with household income of less than $75,000 was Filesafe.net, while the top tax-related site for Web users with an income of more than $75,000 was Accountantsworld.com.

The growth in the number of women visiting tax-related sites outpaced that of men at 31%, from 5.6 million unique visitors to 7.3 million in February 2001. While women are more concerned than men about security issues when preparing their taxes online, men are more concerned than women about privacy.

The top tax-related site in February 2001 according to composition of women was Taxadmin.org, followed by Filesafe.net, while the top sites for men were Accountantsworld.com and Cch.com.

The fastest growing demographic group for tax-related sites is males 25-34, which increased 50 percent since February 2000, followed by females 18-24, which grew 46%.

- Anya Khait